No Rest for the Weary
by SmileyBlueEyes48
Summary: Ch. 2. Alex comes home after saving the world... again. Ficlet.
1. Chapter 1

Goren comes home after saving the world… again. Ficlet. Language.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Bobby Goren or anything else created by the people who did. Ha! Find a loophole in THAT one!

Experts say not to shop when you're hungry. He tries to listen to that advice, but some days he just goes goes goes from start to finish and doesn't even realize he's hungry until his stomach is eating itself in front of the bakery.

He grabs a basket with every intent of filling it, knowing that if he grabbed a cart, he'd fill that too. His wildly fluctuating weight is up this month, following his stress-level like an obedient puppy. What a case. Lots of publicity.

Frozen pizza, Hot Pockets, hotdog buns, peanut butter, and other snacky foods that don't take any thought or preparation before being devoured.

The girl in the check-out counter gives him a second glance. She recognizes him from somewhere, she thinks. But where…? He walks out the door and quickly forgets.

He takes the stairs, flushed but not out of breath when he gets to the third floor. OK, so he didn't let it get too bad this time.

After minimal fumbling with the keys, he gets his door open and hits something solid. The object yowls at him and dives under the couch. "Goddammit, Grendel," he snarls at the bottle-brush tale sticking out from under his sofa. The cat's real name is Peaches, but he can't bring himself to call it that. He's just keeping it until it dies because his mother loves it so much.

He unpacks the groceries, pops a stick of gum and fixes a glass of water, his mind racing crazily and buzzing lamely at the same time. Avoiding the couch, he plops into his recliner and ponders whether or not to turn on the television. After a moment, he figures _What the hell_ and flips on the eleven o'clock local news.

It isn't long before his own face is leering back at him. The anchormen are eating this up. "The self-proclaimed Guinea Gutter of Brooklyn--"

Click, change the channel.

"… Known for torturing, murdering, and mutilating Americans of Italian decent or Italian immigrants--"

Click.

"…Detectives Goren and Eames--"

Click.

"… Near-perfect record arouses suspicion--"

Click.

"… Unusual methods could lead to a dismissal of the confession…"

"Fuck it." He turns the TV off and sits in the semi-darkness, listening to his gum squelch against his teeth and his monster purring under the furniture.

Minutes pass in silence. He rubs his eyelids and sighs. When the bad guy gets away, it's their fault. When they catch the bad guy, they do it wrong. When they have proof they did it right, the City makes them angels for about a week. Then the next psycho comes up and anything positive is quickly forgotten. Eames seems unaffected. Whether New York loves her or hates her, she doesn't care. She does her job regardless.

It's harder for Goren… to be hated. He doesn't have as many people who love him, so hate hurts worse.

"Fuck it," he says again and stretches his long legs until his great body reaches its full height. He rolls his powerful shoulders and winces. He creaks and pops more than he used to.

He throws himself on the bed that'll always be too small and closes his eyes. Seconds later the alarm goes off. The sun is out. The birds are singing. Grendel is screeching by its empty food dish.

A siren sounds in the distance, and he senses innately that he's going to know where it's headed very soon. He's going to follow it.

Morning routine. His cell phone sounds in the corner, the ring tone Eames downloaded for him off the Internet. "Bohemian Rhapsody." The ambulance he just heard is carting away the sole survivor of a hostage situation. Oh, did he call that one or what?

He thinks about asking Captain Deakins to just install a Bat Signal. A G&E Symbol. Then issue grappling-hooks and jet-packs so they can get their sooner.

Nah.

He couldn't afford the gas in a jet-pack, either.


	2. Chapter 2

I do not own Alexandra Eames or anything else created by the people who did.

One more time, she curled her toes inside her shoes as the elevator ascended. Oh, what she'd give if she could wear flats. But being five-foot-three in the police world is completely unacceptable. Especially when your partner is a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than you.

He couldn't shrink, so she tried to grow. She didn't mind the heels on days of dawn-til-dusk paperwork, but today she'd chased down another lead—literally. What part of "Freeze" do they not understand?

When she finally reached her home, she tossed her purse in the chair, slipped off her jacket and kicked the suckers off, under the armoire and out of sight. It was amazing how much better she felt, immediately after her toes were free.

In fact, she felt hungry.

As she passed by the radio she kept on the counter, she flipped it on and let the station keep playing, whatever it was. Hell, she could probably listen to Nelly right now, as long as the noise drowned out her thoughts. She unwrapped a bag of popcorn and sat down, rubbing her temples.

The commercials finally ended and after the fast-talking DJ of "Ninety-one-point-sex" (not that he was being fresh, just slack-jawed) her toe innately started tapping to an '80s drumbeat intro. She quickly recognized Bonnie Tyler's "I Need a Hero," and grinned.

The microwave beeped, she stood, and made a pirouette across the kitchen. She still remembered the dance lessons she took as a kid, the ones her mother let her take to make up for being the only girl in a family of rambunctious boys.

She sang along under her breath, licking her fingers between verses and scolding herself for having such a bad dinner. The song ended and the DJ came back for the eleven-thirty round of Current Events.

"…And for those of you who haven't heard, Lloyd Morgan, AKA the Guinea Gutter, was captured this afternoon by Detectives Alexandra Eames and Robert Goren. I saw it on the news this evening, and I gotta say—I was surprised by this guy. He looked like your average, church-going neighbor, you know, the one whose wife bakes you brownies when you first move in. But the lawyers are already having a heyday with this, something about 'Unorthodox interrogation methods' or some such mumbo-jumbo. Reportedly, Detective Goren—if you saw the news, he was the big, scary-looking guy on Mr. Morgan's right arm—is something of a cuckoo."

Alex quickly put in a CD and fought back a furious shudder. Unclenching her fists, she returned to her chair and stared at the half-empty bag, reeking of salt and butter. Her appetite was gone.

She threw the bag into the wastebasket and spent an extra long time brushing her teeth, flossing, mouth washing, trying to remove a foul taste that just wouldn't budge.

After a quick shower, she oozed into bed where she could still hear her music, and stared at the ceiling. She thought about how things change, and how some people are so stubbornly willing to accept it—even when it's an improvement—that visionaries are mocked.

Susan B. Anthony and her bloomers lead to suffrage and women's slacks, looking ridiculous at first. Abbie Hoffman got many people to stop and think about the underlying silliness of politics, greed and censorship. For Christ's sake, CHRIST was mocked upon the cross and two thousand years later the biggest religion in the world still rues the day of the crucifixion.

Bobby was no revolutionary, no hippie, no deity. He was… Bobby. And Bobby was smart, innovative, unusual, and effective to the point of arousing suspicion.

She often wondered what her role in the partnership was. Was she merely Watson to Sherlock? Snowman to the Bandit? Some days she was so sure of her uselessness all she felt content to do was stand around and watch him quietly destroy his opponents.

But then, he would reach a point in the investigation where his brain—for all its wonders—was useless. It merely shut down. He would come to a place where he simply could not understand a concept or piece a situation together or find the information he needed.

There was always something that halted him, and he would need a shove to keep going. Be it the idea that a man couldn't be satisfied with one partner, or that a woman would go from zero-to-murder in .03 seconds, or that Ctrl Alt Delete would stop that weird buzzing noise, he inevitably came to a temporary stop.

She was needed. The proof was in Bishop's letter, after Alex had come back from maternity leave. Bobby hit that wall, and she didn't know what to do, and he fell to pieces. Alex was the compass, Bobby was the ship. As romantic and corny and… icky as that sounded, it was the truth.

She rolled over, quickly falling asleep. She dreamed of Thor out where the mountains meet the heavens above, where the lightning splits the sea, watching her.


End file.
